So, my friend Kate defended her thesis on Thursday, after two cancellations, and is now a Dr. She's on her way to Chicago, IL even as we speak, to move into a new apartment before starting her new job at Northwestern. I'm so proud of her (she's been like a sister to me here in Pgh), but pretty bummed out that she's no longer next door to my lab :(
However, she wanted to unload her car before moving to a bigger, more expensive, and better served by mass transit city. She has (had) a '95 200SX, standard, with ~80k miles on it. So, since our Nissan is a '91 with 268,000 miles, I figured it would be worth the upgrade (and I think we're trading the old one to our electrician for some work). Plus, Nashville seems like a drive-everywhere kind of city, so I will eventually need a car.
Friday, Kate and I took a trip to Motor Square Garden, an old train station that now houses a AAA service center, and a branch of the DMV. We transferred the title, and I got it registered at the same time. It's still a beater kind of car, but it looks better from the outside, and the things wrong with are different than the ones in our current car (and in both cases, the engine is great & reliable).
In other good news, our roommate has finally moved out. There was some unpleasantness over some utility bills, and I'm pretty ashamed to admit I lost my temper (and ended up not getting anything for the utilities), but it is so nice to have my kitchen back to myself that the money seems insignificant in comparison. Of course, he left a bunch of crap here too, but the main thing is that I will never again have to stand with a forced smile and listen to him explain how he's much smarter than everyone else, to clean his filth-encrusted dishes, to see, hear or smell him ... ever again. I am mainly struggling to let go of the anger I feel at having our generosity taken advantage of, and the confusion I feel over whether I overreacted or not.
A large part of my reaction was simply exasperation with dealing with him. (This is the guy who made a point of telling me that he couldn't find "his" dental floss - when there's 5 different ones in the bathroom, and each cost like 89 cents. Simply suppressing the eye rolls on a daily basis required a lot of mental effort.) But at the same time, he had told me plenty of stories demonstrating how he put one over on other people (so to speak), and there've been several problems with getting the rent check from him (lost in the mail, "my finger slipped and that's why it wasn't the right amount, just plain late), so needless to say, I don't have much faith in his good intentions. But everything was just co-incidental enough to support a more innocuous interpretation, and let me think I was being unfair. I certainly have the tendency to overreact, and am a bit overly sensitive to getting screwed over. So, a lot of back and forth in my own mind over how and why I react the way that I do. Hopefully, I will learn something from this, if only how much I am really over the whole roommate thing. Who knows, maybe he'll become a little more considerate of other people because of it too.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Offer Letter
Greetings from lovely State of Emergency Pittsburgh!
We got pounded on Friday night through Saturday afternoon with 21-ish inches of snow. It was amazing how fast it was coming down on Friday night, and I was lucky enough to get home at 6:45 pm, and decided not to go out again, even though I had plans to go to a good-bye/send-off party for a scientist friend who is taking a job with a pharmaceutical company. I was sad to miss the party, but we live pretty far away from most of the other science-crew, and there is the formidable hill that we live on, a large bridge over a very large river, and a lot of less-formidable hills in between our house & all the East End destinations. Though we have brand new tires on the Nissan, it is, as D would call it, "one-wheel drive", and I have no interest in getting stranded or in any kind of accident. So we stayed put, and watched it come down :)
Saturday morning, I started suiting up to get ahead of the shoveling. It was still snowing just as hard. D thought I was crazy, & tried to argue that no-one else would be shoveling. Thankfully, one of my neighbors was out doing his steps, so I used this as counter-argument. The stairs and walkway weren't bad, but I quickly ran out of room to place snow in. And there was still the car to contend with.
I had no plans to drive anytime soon, but I remembered what happened a couple of winters ago, when snow was not removed from the car, everything melted a little bit, and then it snap froze again in the evening. The car was encased in ice for days, and we eventually just had to chip it off. It took hours.
Plus, the plows that cleared Arlington (thank you Mt. Oliver!) left a huge plow roll between the parked cars and the street. I am honestly not complaining about this, as we were very lucky to get the street cleared at all - the city of Pittsburgh maintained roads are awful, and the city is pretty crippled right now - but shoveling enough of that out of the way so that we will be able to get the car out took 3 separate sessions, over the whole day. There are mountains of snow & road sludge both in front of and behind the car, with just enough of the sides shaved off that its still possible to parallel park. It was a nice day though, and there were families walking up and down the street to get supplies at the corner store, and I chatted with quite a few neighbors on my frequent breaks. Once it stopped snowing, it was bright and sunny, and it was nice to be out in the fresh air.
I did take the car out Sunday, and discovered the condition of the Pittsburgh roads. Strangely enough, the windy road down the formidable hill was fine, a little slushy, but not slippery, and most people were driving sensibly (not all, but most). Then I hit the South Side flats. They had not been plowed at all. The snow/ice/dirt/slush was packed 6 inches thick, except in places where it plunged into a pothole. I was driving ~ 5 mph in first gear, and the car was still starting to slide a little. Twice my tires spun after a full stop, so I kept to backroads and only came to a full stop if there were other cars or people at the intersection. I'm glad I managed to get food (especially since I made stew & soup today), but I skipped the wine store in favor of getting home before it got any colder, and everything froze. I got home fine though, and am not taking the car out again until all this stuff melts.
My university was closed today, since bus service is not fully operational yet, and the roads are a nightmare. So, I made the aforementioned beef stew, and chicken soup (D's request), and then met my friend Spryte for some snow-day fun (she spent 2 hours trying to get to work, then trying to get home once she gave up). Walking up and down the hill was actually pretty okay, not to slippery & didn't take too long, but I really wish I owned some waterproof boots. I'm going to trek into work tomorrow (with dry shoes & socks to change into in my bag), even though they're officially still closed. I've run out of stuff to do at home, and want to take some more pictures, and coverslip some new sections.
In other news, I received my official offer letter via e-mail on Saturday. Well, it was sent Saturday, I didn't check e-mail until this evening (oops!). It's for more than I thought it was - which is a nice surprise. Also, I'm really nervous that I'm not going to live up to expectations. *sigh
We got pounded on Friday night through Saturday afternoon with 21-ish inches of snow. It was amazing how fast it was coming down on Friday night, and I was lucky enough to get home at 6:45 pm, and decided not to go out again, even though I had plans to go to a good-bye/send-off party for a scientist friend who is taking a job with a pharmaceutical company. I was sad to miss the party, but we live pretty far away from most of the other science-crew, and there is the formidable hill that we live on, a large bridge over a very large river, and a lot of less-formidable hills in between our house & all the East End destinations. Though we have brand new tires on the Nissan, it is, as D would call it, "one-wheel drive", and I have no interest in getting stranded or in any kind of accident. So we stayed put, and watched it come down :)
Saturday morning, I started suiting up to get ahead of the shoveling. It was still snowing just as hard. D thought I was crazy, & tried to argue that no-one else would be shoveling. Thankfully, one of my neighbors was out doing his steps, so I used this as counter-argument. The stairs and walkway weren't bad, but I quickly ran out of room to place snow in. And there was still the car to contend with.
I had no plans to drive anytime soon, but I remembered what happened a couple of winters ago, when snow was not removed from the car, everything melted a little bit, and then it snap froze again in the evening. The car was encased in ice for days, and we eventually just had to chip it off. It took hours.
Plus, the plows that cleared Arlington (thank you Mt. Oliver!) left a huge plow roll between the parked cars and the street. I am honestly not complaining about this, as we were very lucky to get the street cleared at all - the city of Pittsburgh maintained roads are awful, and the city is pretty crippled right now - but shoveling enough of that out of the way so that we will be able to get the car out took 3 separate sessions, over the whole day. There are mountains of snow & road sludge both in front of and behind the car, with just enough of the sides shaved off that its still possible to parallel park. It was a nice day though, and there were families walking up and down the street to get supplies at the corner store, and I chatted with quite a few neighbors on my frequent breaks. Once it stopped snowing, it was bright and sunny, and it was nice to be out in the fresh air.
I did take the car out Sunday, and discovered the condition of the Pittsburgh roads. Strangely enough, the windy road down the formidable hill was fine, a little slushy, but not slippery, and most people were driving sensibly (not all, but most). Then I hit the South Side flats. They had not been plowed at all. The snow/ice/dirt/slush was packed 6 inches thick, except in places where it plunged into a pothole. I was driving ~ 5 mph in first gear, and the car was still starting to slide a little. Twice my tires spun after a full stop, so I kept to backroads and only came to a full stop if there were other cars or people at the intersection. I'm glad I managed to get food (especially since I made stew & soup today), but I skipped the wine store in favor of getting home before it got any colder, and everything froze. I got home fine though, and am not taking the car out again until all this stuff melts.
My university was closed today, since bus service is not fully operational yet, and the roads are a nightmare. So, I made the aforementioned beef stew, and chicken soup (D's request), and then met my friend Spryte for some snow-day fun (she spent 2 hours trying to get to work, then trying to get home once she gave up). Walking up and down the hill was actually pretty okay, not to slippery & didn't take too long, but I really wish I owned some waterproof boots. I'm going to trek into work tomorrow (with dry shoes & socks to change into in my bag), even though they're officially still closed. I've run out of stuff to do at home, and want to take some more pictures, and coverslip some new sections.
In other news, I received my official offer letter via e-mail on Saturday. Well, it was sent Saturday, I didn't check e-mail until this evening (oops!). It's for more than I thought it was - which is a nice surprise. Also, I'm really nervous that I'm not going to live up to expectations. *sigh
Monday, February 1, 2010
I do wonder...
how it happens that I am expected/required to work all of my own experiments out, yet also required to do the initial legwork for other grad students (who are getting paid more than me through certain fellowships), and also explain an entirely new technique (that, although I've received excellent help from another faculty member with whom I orchestrated the interaction independently, I am not completely familiar with yet, although I have worked out how I'm going to analyze the data) to an undergraduate student who only has 3 months left in the lab.
It was a slightly irritating day, although I managed to get a few things accomplished, and decide on a plan of action for my dual fluorescence project. The staining for this worked great back when I prepared the slides in June, but the thing about fluorescence is that brain slices have a property called autofluorescence. And the fluorophore-conjugated antibodies eventually lose some of their signal. So, by the time I got done analyzing pilot data, those slides that looks so pretty in June were just messy. I tried imaging them back in December, and while one brain area looks analyzable, the second was just awful. So, I ordered more secondary antibodies, and ran my tissue again. This time the primary antibody didn't work. Today, I ordered more primary, and I'll give it another trial run at the end of this week. (Also, our fridge broke down sometime last week, and I and a post-doc had to deal with all of that. I'm now suspicious of my secondaries again. The ones I just bought last week. RRRggghhh.)
If I can get that going again, I'll be fine. Hopefully finish my data collection/analysis by the end of April, write my thesis in May + June, defend in July, clean up my lab notebooks, etc for the rest of July, and take August off. Because I get paid monthly, and lag behind a month, I should be able to take the time. I hope I can take the time, work on the house, work in the garden a little bit, just relax, before making the move to Nashville.
You all are probably lost, or stopped reading from boredom awhile ago. I need to start posting some pictures and/or slides so it's not just text-based science.
Well, hope you all have a good night. And I will try to post more later - but my calendar is full of work, chores, and social events for friends who are graduating/leaving town. Those of you who met Kate, she is defending on 2/10, and moving to Chicago the weekend after. Boo for me, but Yay!!! for her. I'm so proud of her, and can't wait to visit (and host her in Nashville once I move).
It was a slightly irritating day, although I managed to get a few things accomplished, and decide on a plan of action for my dual fluorescence project. The staining for this worked great back when I prepared the slides in June, but the thing about fluorescence is that brain slices have a property called autofluorescence. And the fluorophore-conjugated antibodies eventually lose some of their signal. So, by the time I got done analyzing pilot data, those slides that looks so pretty in June were just messy. I tried imaging them back in December, and while one brain area looks analyzable, the second was just awful. So, I ordered more secondary antibodies, and ran my tissue again. This time the primary antibody didn't work. Today, I ordered more primary, and I'll give it another trial run at the end of this week. (Also, our fridge broke down sometime last week, and I and a post-doc had to deal with all of that. I'm now suspicious of my secondaries again. The ones I just bought last week. RRRggghhh.)
If I can get that going again, I'll be fine. Hopefully finish my data collection/analysis by the end of April, write my thesis in May + June, defend in July, clean up my lab notebooks, etc for the rest of July, and take August off. Because I get paid monthly, and lag behind a month, I should be able to take the time. I hope I can take the time, work on the house, work in the garden a little bit, just relax, before making the move to Nashville.
You all are probably lost, or stopped reading from boredom awhile ago. I need to start posting some pictures and/or slides so it's not just text-based science.
Well, hope you all have a good night. And I will try to post more later - but my calendar is full of work, chores, and social events for friends who are graduating/leaving town. Those of you who met Kate, she is defending on 2/10, and moving to Chicago the weekend after. Boo for me, but Yay!!! for her. I'm so proud of her, and can't wait to visit (and host her in Nashville once I move).
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